


Through the Compass of the Years

by havocthecat



Category: Forever Knight
Genre: Amnesia, Episode: s03e22 Last Knight, Gen, Post-Canon, UST, romantic longing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 02:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4729484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten years after Last Knight, it's Christmas Eve and Nick runs into an old friend who doesn't recognize him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Compass of the Years

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brightknightie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brightknightie/gifts).



> Thank you to WiliQueen and Mr. Havoc for the betareading jobs, and to Celli for the plot feedback.

The night is cold, the wind blowing snow down the back of his coat. Nick's not looking where he's going, not looking at the holiday revelers buying last minute gifts, not listening to laughter. He walks by himself, on his way to a nightclub run by one of Janette's former protégés, one that stocks his special vintage. He grimaces. So many years of drinking cow's blood and he still can't get used to the thin taste, though he'll never admit it.

He slows to a stop, looking up to the sky, and curses as a pedestrian weaves around him. A woman walking the opposite direction stumbles trying to avoid a pedestrian going around him. Nick grabs a box that falls from her arms and looks into her face. 

It's Natalie. Natalie Lambert, the woman he'd almost killed. The one who, until this moment, he'd thought he killed.

She's overloaded, just like always, and in a rush. "Here," he says, dropping it into her bag and stepping past her, hurrying to get away before she looks into his face. Before she recognizes him. Before he has to face what he's done, or almost done.

Nick hasn't seen her for ten years, hasn't gone and looked for her grave. She's out of his life, safe now, in a way she never was with him. Couldn't have been with him, even though she was too stubborn to admit it, even though, by the end, they'd been holding on to the memories of what was. He hasn't looked for her, so when he sees her again, he stops, interrupting the smooth flow of holiday traffic. 

She slows and turns, puzzlement written on her face. He shouldn't have said anything. He should have moved faster, turned a corner, just missing each other on the street in Victoria. "Hey!" calls Natalie, and he stops. He should walk away. He shouldn't do this, not to either of them. Nick stops anyway and turns back toward her. 

She's loaded down with purchases, but she smiles at him, takes one step forward, and even though she's a little older, her steps a little slower, nothing has changed in her eyes. She's still his Natalie, still the woman who believed in him when he didn't believe in himself.

"Do I know you?" she asks, and she smiles when she sees him. Smiles in a way he hasn't seen her smile, not for a very long time. In a way she would never smile, not if she remembered the last night they had been together.

His heart sinks. He should walk away. He should pretend he doesn't know her, pretend he's never seen her in this new city and their new lives. He should take this as a gift and hope that Lacroix never learns that he's seen her again, but he can't. 

The last he saw of Natalie, she'd been bleeding out on the floor of his loft, and even eight hundred years of life couldn't make it bearable, leaving someone without saying goodbye, without knowing whether they would see their next sunrise.

Nick stays where he is. It's a fresh start, for both of them, anguish at Tracy's death, at Schanke's loss, at everything that had been broken between them dulled by time for him, wiped away somehow by her own brain.

"I'm sorry, no," he says, smiling at the way Nat's brow furrows He settles into Nick Knight's skin again, a persona and a name he hasn't touched in a decade, but whom he'll never forget. "Let me buy you coffee. Those packages look like an awful lot to carry, and it's cold out."

"Just a little last-minute Christmas shopping," she says, lifting up the packages with a bit of a shrug and a wry, self-deprecating look. "My niece is back from her first semester at college and I guess I've been looking forward to spoiling her."

She should remember everything. What he was. Who he was. Even if Lacroix had been able to break through her natural resistance, he hadn't had access. He'd beaten Nick bloody and dragged him unconscious out the skylight just before Reese had shown up. He doesn't know why she doesn't remember him. He knows he has to leave before she puts together where she knows him from, but she's back in his life, even for one short night. Perhaps it's a bit of a Christmas miracle when he needs it most. 

"Then you need a break before you have a teenager to keep up with," says Nick, a twinkle in his eyes and a lightness in his spirit that he hasn't felt in too long. He's spent the last ten years with vampires, and he'll spend at least ten or twenty more, waiting until his face is forgotten by the mortal world. Not even Larry Merlin can purge online news articles about a vanished cop, not quickly. He can wait. He has time on his side. 

She looks at him, suddenly hesitant, and Nick curses to himself. Of course she's wary. Whatever she can't remember, she must know, must have some kind of record of her injuries, of all the deaths in her life before she's met him.

"I promise, just a quick stop someplace nearby," he says, nodding down the road. "I just passed a chocolate shop. Surely they'll have coffee there too?"

"Well," says Nat, drawing the word out as she studies him. Something changes in her body language, a tiny shift, but one that means the world to him. "If there's the possibility of hot chocolate instead--" 

"Hot chocolate it is," says Nick, as eight centuries of training vanish to his childhood, and he holds his hand out to escort a lady. 

"Thanks, but I got it," says Nat, with a grin and a nod at her bags. Nick tries not to look bashful and hopes he succeeds. 

Nat's grin widens as she hoists up her bags and they walk down the street together in a silence more companionable than he's had since Toronto. 

***

They've spent hours talking. Nat doesn't talk much about her past, but she has stories about Amy and Sarah, stories about her new job, still working with the police, but on the day shift, not the night shift. She's trained other coroners, helped solve more murders and trained others to do the same. She lives near her sister-in-law, answers Amy's questions on organic chemistry. 

She's happy. She's happy and whole, and though Nick's heart swells and bursts with pride that she's made something of the wreckage that they left behind in Toronto.

"You know, I don't know you, but you seem pretty glum and it's almost Christmas. What's up?" asks Nat, sipping on her second hot chocolate. She loves them, loves the warmth and the people all around, and he thinks she loves sitting here with him as he listens to her. She leans forward, still interested in listening to him. "I notice you aren't holding any bags, so you probably have your shopping done. I'd think that would make anyone happy."

"I'm afraid I'm a little estranged from my family," admits Nick. 

Lacroix is here; Nick can feel him on the edges of his senses, but he won't approach. Not now. Not when Nicholas wishes to feel mortal again, with the birth of Christ the Redeemer just one sunrise away. Janette is halfway across the world, their already weak bond attenuated further with the distance. She wishes nothing more to do with Lacroix, if not with Nick, and how can he blame her for fleeing to the other side of the Earth the instant she found herself free of him? 

"Surely you have someone?" asks Nat, and, not for the first time tonight, his heart aches. She's right across from him, but he can't have her. He can't interrupt her mortal pleasures, her rebuilt life, not for his own selfishness.

"I used to have a--" He can't ever admit, even now, not to himself nor to anyone. "I used to have a friend. She and I were very close. Now there's just my sister. She lives too far away."

"What happened to her?" asks Nat, her eyes full of sympathy. She sets her hot chocolate down and listens, just listens without judgment. 

Against his better instincts, he begins to talk, and the words pour out.

"My business partner, her friend, had just--" Nick pauses again, collects his bearings. Tracy's grimace as she passed out, the sound of betrayal in her voice. Guilt rushed back, roaring into him for things he couldn't change. Not even vampires could turn back time. Especially not vampires. 

"Had just died?" asked Natalie. She put one hand on his arm in sympathy.

"How did you know?" he asked. 

"You had that look," admitted Nat. "I see it a lot in the business I'm in. What happened when your friend found out that someone you both knew had died?"

"She didn't want to stay in, in London." The lie trips off his tongue with only a slight hesitation. "She wanted to move someplace else, to take the business and start over. Together. We were fighting about it. There was an accident."

"She died too, didn't she?"

He'd thought so, until tonight. Maybe even Lacroix had thought so. Nick hadn't heard a heartbeat when he'd asked Lacroix to kill him. 

Nick nods. "Ten years ago. I was arguing with her and she collapsed." He wracks his mind, trying to find something, anything that will serve as a cause of death. "They said later it was an aneurism. That her blood pressure was too high." 

"You can't possibly think it was the argument," says Nat. "Anything can trigger an aneurism. She could've been caught in bad traffic or been late for a meeting and it would've blown."

"It was my fault she died," says Nick. Guilt runs over him in waves. It's his fault Natalie has no memory of him. It's his fault she's rebuilt her life. She hasn't talked about the hours of physical therapy, the reconnection with Amy and Sarah after not talking for nearly four years. "It was the worst fight we'd ever had. I hurt her more than I ever meant to."

"No, no, she wouldn't blame you," says Nat. Her voice softens and her face is so compassionate that his heart breaks all over again. "I'm sure she couldn't blame you. I'm sure she cared, or she wouldn't have been arguing. People who don't care just walk away. People who care fight for their friends - and with them sometimes too. I'm sure she'd forgive you if she were still around."

Nick wouldn't believe Lacroix, if he'd even say anything excusing Nick of blame instead of talking about vampiric instincts. Nor would he believe Janette, who likes Natalie more than she ever could admit, and yet would never lie to placate Nick. Maybe he wouldn't even believe Schanke, if he'd been still alive to excuse Nick from blame. He believes Nat. 

She smiles at the blossoming hope in his eyes, at the slow dawning realization in his face that Natalie, his Natalie, has forgiven him. Even if she doesn't know it's him that hurt her, him that caused her memory loss. It has to have been him. 

"You should be with someone for Christmas," says Nat. "Do you want to join me and my family for dinner?"

He can't. He won't risk harming her again, won't risk bringing the Enforcers down on her. 

"Rain check?" he asks, though hope is light in him at the thought of seeing her again, at rebuilding his human connections. "I think I might buy a ticket to the Bahamas. I have family there. I haven't seen them in a very long time." 

"As long as you have someone," says Nat, and, for the first time in ten years, knowing that Nat is okay, that she's happy, he can begin to forgive himself. 

\--end--


End file.
